What to Look For (and Avoid) in a Digital Marketing Agency

What to Look For (and Avoid) in a Digital Marketing Agency

Marketing is tough! There are so many different tools and solutions out there that it’s easy to get paralysis of analysis. You can try to keep all your marketing “in-house,” but there are many reasons why that approach is not practical.

The best digital marketing agency for your aesthetic practice, whether you’re a plastic surgeon, medical spa, or dermatology clinic, will help your practice navigate through exactly what you need to be successful with generating more visibility, website traffic, and ultimately, leads. If you’re considering partnering with an agency we’ve outlined some tips for finding the right partner, as well as what you should steer clear of.

1) Industry Specialization

No vertical does this apply more to than the aesthetic industry. There are many nuances to the aesthetic industry, so understanding HIPAA, social media underwriting guidelines, the patient buying cycle, and what’s working with other aesthetic practices is crucial.

You want to work with experts who understand all of your procedures and your target market. While a “local” company may sound appealing because of their proximity to your practice, you’ll likely need to spend countless additional hours simply explaining certain procedures.

2) Credentials

Partnering with Google is invaluable these days as ads can be inadvertently flagged for no reason, so having a dedicated rep to call on to fix these issues is crucial.

Google certifications also show that an agency has the knowledge to run campaigns on your behalf. Furthermore, while Google doesn’t allow re-marketing for aesthetic practices, Turbo has partnerships with other DSPs (demand-side platforms) to successfully run these campaigns.

Turbo Medical Marketing is a verified Google Partner, having certifications in both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.

3) “Tech Stack”

An experienced agency has worked with hundreds of clients similar to yours, and they’ve likely used many different marketing tools over the years. One sign of a top-notch agency is that they develop their own technology to best fit their target market.

4) Ownership

Imagine that you just invested $15,000 for a brand new cutting-edge website and after 6 months the marketing company is proving to be non-responsive, missing deadlines, and your leads are NOT coming in. Now you decide to cut ties and find an option that actually works… then you find out if you try to leave that company they claim that they own your website that you just paid them to build!

Does this really happen? It is hard to believe, but yes… all the time.

No practice wants to pay money for a website or content that they don’t even own. We’ve seen countless practices make the mistake of unknowingly signing an agreement that states that they don’t own, and are essentially leasing, their website or content. Or, they’ll own part of the website, but the agency claims the other part is their “proprietary IP.” Then, when the practice tries to cancel their marketing agreement, their website gets shut down. That’s unprofessional.

Turbo Medical Marketing is transparent about the fact that you own the website we create for you and all the content that we write for you. You own it all. We even supply clients with free lifetime licenses for our proprietary photo gallery and sticky footer, which they can utilize even if they cancel services.

5) Clarity

Some agencies will charge you for “SEO” and do nothing. Others will run Google AdWords for you and not only charge an additional management fee BUT ALSO inflate the cost you’re paying for each click. That’s beyond unprofessional. Here are some tips to avoid getting ripped off by a marketing agency.

Turbo Medical Marketing outlines all monthly marketing deliverables, including what is expected of each client in order to complete each deliverable on time. Turbo does not charge extra for any ad management in their packages and clients pay advertisers directly so no ad expenses are ever inflated.

6) Measurable Results

It is difficult to improve anything that isn’t measured. If you’re investing in digital marketing then the best way to evaluate its effectiveness on your bottom line to calculate your ROI. Too often page rank seems to be the only focus a practicezeros in on when it comes to digital marketing. Organic rankings are great, but they don’t pay the bills; they’re a means to an end, with the “end” being qualified leads.

A superior agency will not only help you rank higher and track leads but will help your practice understand where they’re coming from so you can optimize performance and generate a stronger ROI. This means evaluating your conversion funnel, identifying the top performing pages, tracking the most used devices, and the spotting the largest sources of traffic to your website. A top-notch agency will also track individual leads, including names and contact information, down to the source/medium they came from.

Turbo Medical Marketing can provide in-depth call and web lead tracking that tied a name to the source they came from. This helps our clients make the most informed marketing decision based off of lead quality.

7) Reputation

Another way to evaluate the “street cred” of an agency is to hear what other reputable aesthetic industry insiders are saying. Every company is focused on protecting their reputation and very careful to endorse another company. If an agency has a proven track record they will inevitably be partnered with some quality companies, with speaking opportunities, and they will be proud to share those endorsements with you.

At Turbo Medical Marketing we have worked hard and spent years focused on results in order to obtain partnerships and endorsements with companies such as Allergan, Google, Real Self, Yelp, Alma Lasers, Sciton, and others.

8) Value

Your website is your most important online lead generation tool. You definitely don’t want to go cheap and pay someone to build a website that not only doesn’t look good but doesn’t convert. Conversely, you don’t want to overpay. There are some digital marketing agencies that produce solid websites but charge $30k or more. That’s absurd.

Turbo Medical Marketing is the only digital marketing agency to offer custom websites from scratch for FREE with a marketing contract. And our work is as good as any aesthetic digital marketing agency.

9) Customer Experience

Some agencies don’t give you direct access to an Account Manager. You simply submit your comments and queries to an email address monitored by developers (often oversees). One of the cornerstones of a successful digital marketing agency is good communication.

Turbo Medical Marketing prides itself on having the best customer service. Our Account Managers are all a part of a team that work together to support your account, and they’re available by phone and email every weekday. We also make it a point to run monthly meetings to review our progress, game plan for future months, and introduce new strategies and tactics.

10) Company Roadmap

As noted in #3 above, having proprietary technology is great. However, custom does come at a cost. If it’s never updated it can quickly lose its value (just like your website). Also, updating custom technology is not only costly but leaves you solely dependent on that company to operate successfully or your practice loses your ability to be portable.

A successful digital marketing agency needs to constantly work on improving its technology, strategy, and tactics. If there’s never anything new going on with your agency then that’s a huge red flag that they’re content with where they are and aren’t pushing to get better.

Turbo Medical Marketing is constantly adding new features to their marketing plans, often times at no extra cost to our clients.

As you can see,choosing the right marketing partner is much more than checking boxes and looking for a fancy video ad. Strategically screening your next agency is invaluable if your goal is to generate more leads and improve ROI, all while saving a ton of money and heartache.

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Tom joined Matt in 2010, helping co-found Turbo Medical Marketing. As COO, Tom oversees all production and works directly with both the executive team and the Account Managers. Tom has helped to formulate systems and processes for sales, business development, internal marketing, service offerings, client intake, and employee hiring and training.
You can get a sense of Tom's marketing knowledge, as well as pick up some marketing tips and insights, by checking out the Turbo blog that he contributes to weekly. Tom has also spoken at several aesthetic conferences in the past about topics ranging plastic surgery technology to mobile marketing.
Tom received his B.A. in Business Management Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a former collegiate rugby player and he enjoys golfing, snowboarding, hiking, and playing with his dog Yogi in his spare time. He's also a mentor with the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program in Charleston. Tom lives with his wife Lindsay in Mt. Pleasant, SC.

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